In current food-packaging companies, many people work on the line to pick products from crates and place them into trays. The PicknPack project aims to further automate this process by developing robotic technology.
Together with partners Marel and Lacquey, The Wageningen UR is developing a crate-picking robot. Developments focus on flexibility to deal with variation within a product type (e.g., vine tomatoes) and to be able to quickly switch to a different product type (e.g., grapes). By combining 3D information from scene observed by cameras with knowledge about the layout of the gripper, optimal grasping actions are proposed, without damaging the products in the crate. Thus, the crate is emptied by the robot and new crates are automatically fed into the robotic workspace.
In this Pick-and-pack-project, Wageningen UR Greenhouse Horticulture closely collaborates with Food & Biobased Research Wageningen UR.
For more information, visit www.wageningenur.nl